2023-07-02 05:00:00
According to the National Federation of Nautical Industries, France appears to be the European leader and one of the world leaders in the pleasure boat market. At the beginning of the 2020s, France even far exceeded the milestone of one million registered pleasure boats. Mechanically, the production of new ships leaves old ones on the side every year. In this context, a Tarn company wishes to give a second life to these pleasure boats abandoned or destined for destruction because they are deemed unfit for navigation, as is the case for thousands of them each year in the country. Vento-Sol, installed in both Castres and Lautrec, intends to reuse these boats to transform them into an autonomous system for the treatment of sanitary effluents. “Farmers who use phytosanitary products must then clean their sprayer and this washing water must be treated. They are considered to be sanitary effluents because they still contain pesticides and you can’t do anything with them. You throw it once in the wild, it’s fine, but having this practice for 40 years can have significant consequences on the pollution of our rivers and groundwater, “ justifies Nicola Vento, the founder and director of the company Vento-Sol.
France, a country with world-renowned agricultural production (5th largest exporter of agricultural products), was even the first to legislate on the treatment of these sanitary effluents, in the mid-2000s. According to the legislation in force, Since its introduction, farmers have had three ways of treating them: dilution, recovery before entrusting their treatment to a service provider specializing in the management of hazardous materials, or the acquisition of an independent treatment method that ticks the boxes of the code of the environment. It is on this last possibility that Nicolas Vento and his company have been working for several years, by transforming old pleasure boats into a kind of autonomous tank for treating these polluted waters. “Boat hulls are made with polyester resin. It is chemically compatible with the storage of pesticidal materials. So the idea is to keep the hull, remove all its furniture inside, in order to make it a tank of several thousand liters of sanitary effluents »describes the entrepreneur.
A means of communication
To later turn it into an autonomous treatment tank for phytosanitary effluents, Nicolas Vento intends to equip the hulls of these dismantled boats with a ventilation system powered by an electrical source. “I calculated in 2022 that this would amount to only around forty euros per year in electricity”, wanted to reassure the leader right away. Once installed, this ventilation system projects air directly inside the hull of the boat, which gradually evaporates phytosanitary effluents. However, the quantity of waste water eliminated over a year may vary depending on the external climate and may therefore be different depending on the geographic areas where this transformed hull is stored. The Vento-Sol company has already designed a prototype with an out-of-service boat with a 4,000-litre hull to test its concept, which seems to be appealing. “We already have demand from farmers and winegrowers. They are above all interested in communicating with this hull, both for private events and to communicate on the fact that they are in a circular economy and wastewater treatment approach. It’s more interesting than hiding the fact that you treat sanitary effluents and then you demonstrate that you are acting for the environment. I plan to complete the first sale in 2023,” analyse Nicolas Vento.
To satisfy future orders and to supply itself with out-of-service boats, Vento-Sol will collaborate with the eco-organization Aper. This is approved by the Ministry of Ecological and Solidarity Transition to manage the dismantling and recycling of boats. Subsequently, the Bathô shipyard will prepare them in Castres for their second life. With this organization, the will of the Tarn entrepreneur will be to offer his customers different sizes of shells, it is then up to him to respond to the order placed.
Large groups already seduced
However, Nicolas Vento and his company are not new to this market for the treatment of sanitary effluents. The entrepreneur has been marketing his product dubbed Ecobang for regarding ten years. After “regarding fifteen prototypes”, his company launched the marketing in 2015 of large square-shaped tanks, also equipped with a ventilation system, always with the objective of treating these sanitary effluents. A tank can treat 1,500 to 2,500 liters of wastewater per year, depending on the climate and its geographical storage area. Recently, the company from Tarn also offers the installation of treatment systems on custom-made tanks already available to their customers. “Today, we have marketed 400 sanitary effluent treatment systems, 98% of which have been acquired by farmers. But we also have the SNCF which bought our system which uses chemicals for the maintenance of its network”, welcomes the entrepreneur, who has also seduced BASF for its farms where the large group is testing its future phytosanitary products. In the same perspective, Nicolas Vento is currently working on a small model of his Ecobang in order to market it particularly to laboratories, which daily use products that are harmful to human health and the behavior of the environment. He thus hopes to maintain the economic momentum set in motion around his innovation. After 123,000 euros in turnover in 2021, he closed the 2022 financial year with 180,000 euros and expects at least to do as well in 2023. His company has just recorded a large order from Italy and Vento-Sol will launch the distribution of its products in Switzerland. But at a time when air pollution is also a subject that occupies the public debate, might the water vapors emanating from its vats thwart this good growth? “The quality of pesticides released into the air is negligible compared to what is spread in the open air in the fields when they are thought to be used outdoors. Furthermore, there are no standards on the concentration of phytosanitary products in the air. My system complies to the letter with the Environmental Code »would like to reassure Nicolas Vento by way of conclusion.
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